


just what we need (and you decided this)

by taywen



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, High Chaos (Dishonored), High Chaos Daud, Low Chaos Corvo Attano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-11-20 02:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11326503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: Corvo opens the door to the room at the top of the lighthouse, but it isn’t Corvo. It can’t be. His coat isn’t hanging off his frame, tailored for someone who hadn’t spent six months in Coldridge; it’s tight around the shoulders, and bloody around a gash where his heart should be. Except the grey garment beneath it is whole.It’s all wrong. Corvo is taller than this, and not as stout. He should be kneeling, arms open for her to fling herself into, not- looming over her with a bloody blade in his hand.





	just what we need (and you decided this)

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to title this fic "mm whatcha say" but I felt like it needed to be a bit more serious. so have some different lyrics from "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap instead. :')
> 
> originally written for high chaos week... 2015, I believe? but I just finished it now. nailed it.

Corvo opens the door to the room at the top of the lighthouse, but it isn’t Corvo. It can’t be. His coat isn’t hanging off his frame, tailored for someone who hadn’t spent six months in Coldridge; it’s tight around the shoulders, and bloody around a gash where his heart should be. Except the grey garment beneath it is whole.

It’s all wrong. Corvo is taller than this, and not as stout. He should be kneeling, arms open for her to fling herself into, not- looming over her with a bloody blade in his hand.

Emily takes a step back. “Corvo?” She hates how her voice quavers.

“No,” her mother’s killer says.

* * *

“Corvo!” Emily cried, her voice high with youth and fear. “Corvo, is that you?”

Daud glanced down at the key in his hand, the gold glinting against the dark leather of his gloves. Corvo had foregone gloves, had displayed the Outsider’s mark for all to see, as if daring those around him to judge him for it.

Or perhaps no one had noticed. Perhaps Corvo hid the mark in plain sight, standing so the Loyalists couldn’t see it, and sneaking past every guard and Overseer and civilian and target without being spotted.

The posters plastered on seemingly every other wall all displayed the same thing: disappearance or abduction by an unknown assailant. The gruesome mask that Daud now wore was nowhere to be found.

The lighthouse was silent, apart from the frantic cries of the child empress. Daud took a breath, and inserted the key into the lock.

* * *

“That’s three of those I’ve marked that you’ve killed now, Daud,” the Outsider said at one of Granny Rags’ shrines. Was that vicious glee in his dark eyes, or disappointment?

More importantly, did Daud care?

“And Slackjaw dead as well. How convenient for you.” The Outsider cocked his head, leaning forward slightly. “What is it you plan to do now? Finish the job for Corvo and put Emily Kaldwin on the throne? Or perhaps you’ll kill her too; end the short-lived Kaldwin dynasty once and for all.”

“Don’t you already know?” Daud retorted, crossing his arms.

“This is one eventuality that I had not considered,” the Outsider told him. “Corvo meant to steal your key and leave without a trace; you turned a moment too soon. He would have helped Slackjaw, and knocked Granny Rags unconscious.”

“Shut up.” The rune in his hands creaked from the pressure of his grip. “ _Shut up_ -”

“I’m not done,” the Outsider said mildly, and Daud’s voice died in his throat. “And neither are you. You’re right, Daud: I do know what you plan to do. The opportunities and outcomes are spread out before your feet, infinitely more limited that what Corvo could have accomplished, had you not cut his life short like so many others before. Delilah. Billie. The Empress. And all of _your_ tomorrows are drenched in blood. Whose blood, that’s the question...”

Daud considered hurling the rune at the wall, after the Outsider faded away; he tucked it into Corvo’s coat instead, the weathered surface of the bone sticking against still-tacky blood.

* * *

Daud didn’t mean to kill Corvo. He’d meant for Corvo to kill him. He’d planned to beg for his own life, worthless as it was, if it came to that. He hadn’t expected Corvo to spare it. He’d even made his peace with that, for whatever measure of peace a blood-soaked murderer could find.

Nightmare after nightmare of the Royal Protector murdering him, and somehow Daud’s blade was the one that found its mark.

Corvo’s hand clutched at Daud’s wrist, but his fingers slid off the leather. A soft gasp escaped him, muffled by the mask and barely audible: “The Hound Pits.”

His eyes were wide, unseeing, when Daud pried off the mask. The blue coat followed, ruined as it was by Corvo’s lifeblood. Daud stripped off his own coat and pulled Corvo’s on; the fit was tight around the shoulders, and something dug into his chest, shuddering weakly.

“What have you done,” moaned the heart in a voice that Daud chose not to recognize. “What have you done, _what have you done_ -”

A wet, sickening squelch cut it off as Daud stomped it into the bloody floorboards of his office.

The hair at the back of his neck stood up and Daud tensed; but it was just Thomas, reporting in. His second looked at Corvo for a long moment, then turned to Daud: “Sir.”

“Any casualties?” Daud asked, even though he knew the answer.

“A few men were found unconscious, but otherwise unharmed.” Thomas’ voice offered no hints as to his opinion on the matter.

“Find Rulfio. Put him in charge. We’re leaving.”

“For Serkonos?”

Daud glared at Thomas before fitting Corvo’s mask over his face. “No. Meet me at the sewer gate.”

“Sir,” Thomas repeated, and saluted him before disappearing.

* * *

“You killed him,” Emily says with dead certainty. “You killed him.”

“Yes,” the assassin says. _Daud_. Emily heard Martin whispering about him with Havelock. The Knife of Dunwall, the one assassin who could have defeated Corvo and killed the Empress. He shifts his weight, silence spooling out between them.

Emily wants to ask if he’s going to kill her too. He already killed her parents. He probably killed Havelock; the short-lived Regent’s ravings about _Corvo_ ruining their plans had cut off a few minutes earlier.

At length, he says, “I’ll take you back to the Tower.”

“Stay away from me,” Emily says, glaring up at the mask. It had always frightened her whenever she caught glimpses of it before: at the Golden Cat, or brief moments at the Hound Pits, when Corvo slipped it into his pocket after his missions or pulled it on as he boarded Samuel's boat. It was- wrong. Corvo shouldn’t have worn such a gruesome, macabre face.

But here, over the assassin’s scarred features, it fits perfectly; her fear is gone, or perhaps has been transmuted into something else.

“... Very well,” the assassin’s harsh voice grates out. He turns away from her, his steps silent as he walks out of her sight.

When Emily dares venture out of the room, she finds a young man in the same uniform as her mother’s killers, minus the mask, standing at the head of the grand table, his back to the veritable feast laid upon it.

“Lady Emily,” he says, bowing. His uniform is blue, and it isn’t splattered with blood like Corvo’s had been.

“You work for- _him_ ,” Emily says.

“Yes.”

“He killed Corvo.”

“... Yes.” He looks like he wants to add more, but he doesn’t.

“Just tell me,” Emily orders.

“He didn’t mean to,” the man says. He seems earnest, but so did Havelock and Martin and Pendleton. Well, sort of. This assassin pulls it off better, but that doesn’t mean Emily can trust him.

“Oh,” Emily says.

Her eyes travel across the room, to Havelock’s corpse lying before the fireplace, blood leaking from where the assassin ran him through. It’s the exact same place he slid the blade into her mother, and into Corvo. Pendleton and Martin are slumped on either side of the table; a glass lies on its side just beyond Pendleton’s dangling hand.

“Poisoned?” Emily asks, walking over to Martin. He hadn’t even gotten the red jacket yet. He probably wasn’t a very good Overseer. He didn’t do anything about Corvo, despite the fact that her father had kept the Outsider’s mark bare for anyone to see. And now a band of assassins marked by the same creature was here, in what should have been a stronghold.

“Yes. Likely the same stuff they used on Lord Corvo.”

“Don’t say his name,” Emily says, but it comes out as more of a shriek. Her voice echoes around the high ceilings; the man flinches when she glares at him.

“I apologize.”

“Who cares if he didn’t mean to?” Emily steps closer, aware that her voice is rising steadily. The man’s gaze darts around quickly, before settling on her again. He doesn’t meet her eyes. “Is he going to kill me too? Is he going to _accidentally_ murder me too?”

“No,” the man says. “He- no.”

“Whatever,” Emily says, her fury draining away and leaving her tired. “Why are you here, if it’s not to kill me?”

“To take you back to the Tower,” the man says, repeating what Daud had said earlier. They’re consistent, at least, and he seems as sincere as before.

“Oh,” Emily says again. “And then what?”

The man blinks. “Put you on the throne,” he says slowly, but doesn’t sound entirely certain about that.

“So _he_ can kill more people using me as an excuse?”

“No, I-” but the man falters, glancing around the room again. Maybe the assassin is still around, lurking somewhere; listening. “I think he wants to-” the man winces, but Emily waits patiently for him to continue, “-help. You. Or at least, ensure that your rule lasts.”

Emily stares at him for several seconds, possibly as long as the man struggled to find his words. “Until someone pays him enough to kill me, you mean.”

“No,” the man says immediately, shaking his head to emphasize his point.

Emily’s still not entirely convinced. Or even partially convinced. But there isn’t much she can do from here. Perhaps when she’s on the throne she’ll be able to do something, although she has a sneaking suspicion that her circumstances won’t change a lot. But if the assassin is as committed to putting her on the throne as his man says, it’ll at least be better than being locked in a room at the top of this dreary lighthouse.

So, because she should learn as much as she can about her new puppeteers, she asks, “What’s your name?”

“Thomas.”

“Are you strong?” Emily asks.

“Strong enough.” He sounds confused by the question.

“The other one who wore the red coat was his lieutenant. Who are you?”

Recognition filters across his face. His expressions are easy to read; that, or he’s a _really_ good liar. It’s too soon to tell. “Her replacement.”

Emily blinks in surprise. A woman had been Daud’s second in command? Though she didn’t last, apparently.

“Then you can be my new Royal Protector,” Emily decides, testing. She'd been skilled at getting her way when Mother was still alive, but that was because of who Mother  _was_. She learned all too quickly how little say she had in her life after the assassin and his men came, and especially after they gave her to the Pendleton twins. “I don’t want to see _him_ again.”

“I- yes,” Thomas says. “I can arrange that.”

“Good. You can take me back to the Tower now.”


End file.
